Sand in the Coffee, Vol. 118: the mullet, and the fall show nobody sells tickets to
“What are those fish jumping for?”
Every house on the bay side gets asked this by the second morning. Somebody’s out on the dock, a fish the length of a forearm clears the water, lands flat with a slap like a dropped paperback, and does it again thirty feet over. Then another one. Then the person on the dock turns around and looks at you as if you live here and ought to know.
You don’t, and neither does anybody else. Those are mullet, and science has a list of theories about the jumping (a gulp of air, shaking off parasites, dodging something underneath) and no settled answer. My working theory is joy. Nobody has disproven it.
What locals do know is what mullet are about to do, and it’s the best free show of the fall.
meet the mullet
Striped mullet are the gray, torpedo-shaped fish in every bay, bayou and canal on this coast, usually cruising in loose schools near the surface. Three things worth knowing:
They’re mostly vegetarians. They graze algae and the soft stuff off the bottom, which makes them about the only fish on this coast a shrimp on a hook won’t fool. That’s why you see people throwing cast nets for them, not rods.
They have a gizzard. Like a chicken. They swallow mud for the good parts, and the gizzard grinds it.
In the fall, they leave. As the water cools behind each cold front, adult mullet bunch up into big schools and head out of the bays, through the passes and along the beach toward the open Gulf, where they spawn offshore. Fishermen call it the mullet run. It starts building about now and usually peaks later in the fall, behind the stronger fronts.
everything else comes to dinner
A school of mullet moving down the beach is a buffet on a conveyor belt, and the whole food chain has the schedule. Bull redfish, the big bronze adults with the spot on the tail, push into the surf to meet them. Jack crevalle crash through them. Dolphins work the edges and pin them against the beach. Pelicans fold up and drop like somebody let go of an umbrella. Ospreys take the ones that get too close to the top.
You don’t need a rod, a boat or a license to watch any of it. You need to know what you’re looking at.
how to spot it from a chair
Nervous water. A patch of surface that looks like it’s raining on that one spot and nowhere else. That’s a school just under the top. This weekend, admittedly, that narrows it down not at all.
A dark shadow in the first gut. The gut is the deeper slot of water between the beach and the sandbar. A school moving along it looks like a cloud shadow on a day with no clouds.
Fish showering out all at once. When mullet suddenly spray out of the water in every direction, something large is underneath them. Keep your eyes on that spot.
Pelicans that stop circling. Pelicans cruising is scenery. Pelicans diving one after another is information.
Wear polarized sunglasses. They cut the glare off the surface so you can see shadows under it, and at twenty bucks or so they’re the cheapest upgrade this hobby has. Bring binoculars if the rental has a pair in the junk drawer. Go early: the wind is usually lightest in the first couple of hours after sunrise, the surface is easiest to read, and the fish are busy.
where to stand
The Pass. Most of what leaves Perdido Bay for the Gulf funnels through Perdido Pass, so the jetties there are where a run looks busiest. Stay off the rocks when they’re wet.
The Gulf beach, almost anywhere. Perdido Key State Park and Johnson Beach both give you long stretches of sand with fewer people this time of year. Johnson Beach is national seashore, so there’s an entrance fee at the gate. Walk the waterline and watch the first gut.
The bay side. Big Lagoon State Park is where to watch mullet do their daily jumping at close range, from the shoreline and the boardwalks, with no surf to read through. It isn’t the run itself. It’s the rehearsal.
the cast-net guy
Sooner or later you’ll see someone wade out with a round net draped over one shoulder and an edge of it held in their teeth. They’ll wait, and wait, then spin and throw, and the net opens into a perfect circle and drops. It looks easy. Your first one will hit the water in a wad, shaped like a wet beach towel.
Three rules. Don’t walk through the water they’re watching. Don’t stand behind them, because the net swings back before it goes forward. And don’t ask if they’re catching anything. They’re holding the answer.
If you want to try it yourself, a cast net counts as fishing, and Florida and Alabama each have their own license rules, so check the ones for whichever side of the state line you’re standing on. The anglers in your group can start at /fishing/.
and yes, people eat them
Fried mullet with grits is an old Panhandle plate, and smoked mullet is reason enough to stop at any seafood counter that has it. Mullet is rich and oily, and the old rule is to eat it the day it’s caught because it turns strong fast. That’s why you rarely see it on a menu far from the water. Old-timers call it Biloxi bacon. The roe, heavy this time of year, gets salted and dried in other parts of the world and sold as bottarga, at prices that would startle anybody holding a cast net.
None of this should be confused with the Interstate Mullet Toss at the Flora-Bama every April, where people throw one from Florida across the state line into Alabama. That mullet has already had its bad day. The ones in the run are leaving under their own power, and while they’re at it they’re the best thing happening on the beach.
Nobody’s reading nervous water through a downpour this weekend. When the rain clears out, check /beach-today/ for the flags, put on the polarized glasses, and take the first hour of the morning down to the water. Look for the one patch where it’s raining and nowhere else is.
— Chris
P.S. Know a charter, bait shop or seafood counter we’re missing, Florida side or Alabama side? Add it, free: /submit/
